Friday, November 21, 2014

Bordeaux for Two Days

Yesterday we drove from the Loire to spend two days in Bordeaux. Along the way we had a lunchtime stop over at Poitiers, a place we visited a couple of years back. I knew there was a car park under the square of the Poitiers Notre Dame. Its not a difficult manoeuvre to achieve with a set of steps out of the car park and there it is. The cathedral of Poitiers is there in front of you.

Rising from the depths of the Poitiers car park, the first image that appears is the XI Cathedrale of Poitiers

Wikipedia says,Its construction began in 1162 by Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine on the ruins of a Roman basilica, and work was well advanced by the end of the 12th century. It is the largest medieval monument in the city of Poitiers.

On our previous visit to Poitiers we were impressed with the graphics on the columns of the cathedral - we still are.

It seems that Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard the Lionheart and Jeanne d'Arc follow us where ever we travel in France. We've met a few historic names on this trip that we were not aware of through the regions we have travelled and architecture that we have photographed.

Stained glass depicting Jeanne d'Arc

I've depicted some close ups of the above.

After lunch, our overnight stop was with fellow Bloggers, Diane and Nigel whom we met two years ago at Odour sur Glane, a village that was raised to the grown by the Germans in WWII. Nigel has recently been taking local cooking classes and presented us with a fine main course Boeuf Bourgogne (we were impressed Nigel) which combined well with Diane's South African Butternut soup. Main course followed in the French tradition with cheeses before desert. Cognac completed the meal.As Diane and Nigel had dental appointments in the morning, we set off early with Diane's hand drawn map to discover a new (to us) Chateau on the way to Bordeaux.

As we came over the rise to Rochefoucauld, the Chateau dominated the horizon with the city below. Unfortunately like many of France's attractions have closed during the winter season.

We find the truck drivers in France very well behaved. In Australia, trucks are not speed limited to 90 kmh nor are they kept to the slow lane therefore clogging the faster traffic.

Our hotel in Bordeaux is near an underground car park. We thought it would be safer than this above ground car park.

After a big morning of driving to Bordeaux, we were very impressed with our next two nights accommodation.

We just returned from dinner tonight as we post and look forward to seeing more of Bordeaux tomorrow. From what we have seen in the last eight hours, we are most impressed of what the city has to offer in the way of food, wine and shopping.